The group was first given a tour through the impressive Chempark Leverkusen, a real chemical park with companies from across the chemical industry (not only Bayer). The production facilities of the individual companies at the Chempark are interconnected via material and energy flows and thus benefit from each other. The Chempark has its own Rhine port and its own railway network, which are used to transport raw materials and finished products.
After the more than one hour Chempark tour, they had the opportunity to meet researchers of the Process & Technology Development (PTD) department who work in the field of Chemoinformatics, more specifically in the field of molecular simulation with quantum computers, hybrid modelling, retrosynthesis and early drug discovery. Further insights were provided into Computer Vision to monitor crops and seedlings. All this was complemented by two lab visits. This was an excellent visit tailored to the students’ wishes and it was delivered in an outstanding fashion.
The group included more than 30 current Life Science Informatics students from 13 different countries and two staff members, Professor Holger Fröhlich from Fraunhofer SCAI and Dr. Daniela Treutlein from the Transfer Center enaCom, establishing important links to Dr. Georg Mogk, Principal Expert Applied Mathematics at Bayer and the b-it (Bonn-Aachen International Center for Information Technology) Life Science Informatics program.